Visions of sugarplums might have danced in other kids’ heads, but we dreamt of a Christmas morning with a kitchen table piled with homemade buttermilk biscuits, butter, jams and jellies, eggs, bacon, country sausage, ambrosia, grits, orange juice, coffee with real whipped cream and, at the center of the table, Mama’s red-eye gravy and fried country ham. Country ham that Daddy fetched every fall from a farmer’s smokehouse. A farmer who’d spent at least a year on that ham – curing it in dry salt, smoking it for up to two months and hanging it up to age – just as farmers have been doing in the South since at least the mid-1600s.

Country ham is an art born of salt, smoke and sweat. But competition from the commercial ham industry has made all of that smoke and sweat a lot less appealing to many farmers. The tradition was dying until a few years ago, when authentic country ham was rediscovered by American chefs looking for a domestic alternative to European dry-cured hams. Soon, some farmers started marketing their product as “American prosciutto.” According to the The New York Times, the quality and flavor of these hams are comparable to the more respected (and expensive) hams of Spain and Italy.

The first time I saw that label, “American prosciutto,” on a country ham, my jaw dropped at the genius of the idea and the new price, about $1 an ounce. Luckily, these Pretzel Bites with Cheddar and Country Ham require only 3 ounces.

I hope we find a new ham bootlegger before Christmas.

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So, here’s one last simple, tasty zucchini recipe: Grilled Zucchini Rollatini with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Goat Cheese. Combine goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, thyme, Parmesan and olive oil into a spreadable mixture; place a heaping spoonful on one end of a grilled zucchini slice and roll. The subtly flavored zucchini is a perfect foil for the richness and tang of the goat cheese and the intensity of the sun-dried tomatoes.

The whole process takes just a few minutes using an indoor grill pan, so you could easily make a small batch of these and inhale one or two whilst your Eternal Love and Life Partner is outside prepping The Grill and fighting mosquitoes large enough to rape chihuahuas. Just make sure he gets the last of the ice cream. It’s the Duggar way.

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Through her entire pregnancy, my sister craved onions with an intensity typically seen only during Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. Once, Chili’s ran out of Awesome Blossoms just after she and my brother-in-law got there, and she tied the waitress to her back bumper and drove around the parking lot until she went into labor.

But about three days before the baby came, I made this Pan-Fried Onion Dip for the magna mater. Caramelized onions folded into a mixture of cream cheese, sour cream and mayonnaise. Since I didn’t want my niece to be born needing a stent, I used low-fat versions of everything, and no one could tell the difference. Really, it’s all background to that pronounced onion flavor. If you’ve ever inhaled an embarrassingly significant portion of Lipton® Onion Dip, you will love this stuff.

P.S. Laney Katheryn was born Thursday afternoon. Her breath is remarkably fresh for a human who must be at least one-third onion.

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I know, it’s not officially summer for a few weeks, but the neighborhood kids are running through the sprinklers, the fireflies are out, and the ice cream truck rolls through twice a day, blaring “Pop Goes the Weasel” through the open windows. We’ve been grilling and making Coke floats and riding around with the windows down singing “Love Shack” at the top of our lungs.

It’s summer.

Time for picnics and cookouts, family reunions and weddings and baby showers, festivals and county fairs, concerts, day trips, the farmers’ market, cobblers and pies and homemade ice cream, driving around with the windows down, sitting barefooted on the front step and listening to Jeff play guitar at night. I’m usually not a summer person – mainly because of the heat, humidity and mosquitoes big enough to rape chickens – but so many of my friends are having babies, there’s no time to do anything but celebrate … and keep a supply of fresh towels and boiling water … and make this Roasted Garlic, Poblano and Red Pepper Guacamole.

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You know how sometimes you flip through a cookbook or magazine, and you see a recipe that gets stuck in your craw? Maybe something with an amazing photo or an interesting ingredient or something that just sounds like it might make your life complete? Me, too. But then there are those times when I get stuck on something that doesn’t even remotely make sense – like my infatuation with these Buttermilk Bacon Pralines from Martha Hall Foose’s “Screen Doors and Sweet Tea.”

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t found many bacon desserts that sound all that appetizing. BLTs? Yes. Bacon simmering in a big pot of beans? Definitely. Bacon crumbled on my salad or baked potato? Oh, yeah. I thoroughly agree that bacon is the candy of meat; I’ve just never wanted it in my cake, pie or cookies.

Then I found these pralines. Read More…

If there’s anything I’ve learned as a member of the Barefoot Bloggers, it’s the value of having a package of frozen puff pastry in the freezer. If you’ve got a box of Pepperidge Farm on ice, then AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT, you can turn an ordinary visit into something special with the Barefoot Contessa’s Easy Sticky Buns, Apple Turnovers or these Tomato and Goat Cheese Tarts. Puff pastry is the party pastry.

There’s nothing complicated about making these tarts. Once your sheets of puff pastry have defrosted, you cut circles from the sheets using a saucer, biscuit cutters, a glass, whatever’s handy. Then refrigerate them, and work on your onion mixture. When the onions are lightly browned, you’re ready to score a border inside the pastry circles and prick the pastry inside the score lines with a fork. Once that’s done, you can start piling on the toppings: freshly grated Parmesan; onions sautéed with garlic, white wine and thyme; garlic-and-herb goat cheese; a slice of tomato; julienned basil and a little shaved Parmesan.

We used biscuit cutters to make mini tarts, and each one packed a lot of flavor. They would make excellent appetizers–totally beating down a tray of prefab spanakopita–and you could easily change the toppings to offer more variety. Oh, Ina. I think I love you.

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These Spiced Pecans look naked, don’t they? It makes it so much more fun when someone grabs a big handful, because these babies are spicy.

Sure, when you first pop them into your mouth, you only taste the sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. But then the heat kicks you right in the back of the throat, like Chuck Norris but with more mercy. Read More…

The three cheeses you see above are Carr Valley Cheese’s Mobay (a Wisconsin cheese that’s half goat’s milk and half sheep’s milk with a layer of ash in between), Sweet Grass Dairy’s Sevenwood (a Georgia raw cow’s milk cheese washed in balsamic vinegar) and Cypress Grove Chevre’s Purple Haze (a California fresh goat cheese flavored with lavender and fennel pollen–and a 25th Annual American Cheese Society competition winner).

Did I know about any of these cheeses before taking on the Barefoot Bloggers challenge to create a Cheese Platter? Noooooooo. I picked this challenge, because the cheese counter at Whole Foods was a total mystery. Because I was reading great things about American artisanal cheeses but hadn’t tried any. And because, when you have a large group of people all making the same recipe, you seize the opportunity for variety where you can get it. In this case, straight from the cow’s teats. Or the goat’s. Or the sheep’s. We don’t judge.

There’s no real recipe for a cheese platter, but if you follow Ina Garten’s tips in “The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook,”you’ll put together something dangerously respectable. Read More…